the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 3, 2025
When big, devastating fires hit Los Angeles in January, the L.A. Fire Department could not even deploy all the firefighters who had reported to work. The reason? Dozens of aging fire trucks were broken and lacking parts.
L.A. fire officials said that about 100 fire vehicles, more than half the department’s fleet, were out of service in January, along with 40 other vehicles, including ambulances.
It’s not just L.A. Fire departments across the U.S. have to wait for years for new trucks they have ordered to arrive—parts for broken trucks can take up to a year to be delivered, the New York Times reported recently.
And prices have soared too: ladder trucks that cost 1.3 million dollars just a few years ago, now go for 2.3 million dollars.
It’s all because of monopoly control of the industry: only three companies make about 70 to 80% of the specialty vehicles (fire trucks, ambulances, street sweepers, etc.) in the U.S. These companies have been jacking up prices and taking their time to deliver orders.
About 25 years ago, there were many relatively small fire vehicle manufacturers in the U.S. When some of these companies began to fail, Wall Street investment firms moved in to buy them at a low price. They then merged companies and cut back wherever they could to increase profit. One of these companies, Rev Group, cut down production by about one-third in 2021 by closing two plants. Today, Rev Group, which controls 30% of the fire truck market, has a backlog of orders worth 4 billion dollars, and tells fire departments delivery will take two to three years!
But while fire departments scramble to get their aging trucks to work, Rev Group’s profits have soared. Its parent company, the private equity firm American Industrial Partners, awarded its shareholders a special dividend of 180 million dollars in 2024—80 million of it to itself—before selling nearly all of its shares.
January’s fires in the L.A. area destroyed more than 16,000 structures, including 11,500 homes, and killed at least 29 people. How many of these homes and lives could have been saved if Wall Street firms had not been gutting the fire truck industry?